The Masterpiece

by Émile Zola

  After the break the task was resumed, but in a more leisurely manner, in one room, where there were chairs to sit on and even tables provided with pens, ink, and paper. There, all pictures measuring under one and a half metres were judged ‘on the easel’, lined up ten or twelve at a time along a sort of platform covered with green baize. Many of the Committee sat there happily ignoring the proceedings, some settled down to deal with their correspondence, and the chairman had to assert himself at frequent intervals to ensure a decent majority. Occasionally there would be a wave of enthusiasm, everybody would jostle everybody else, and the vote by a show of hands would mean a violent agitation of hats and sticks above a seething mass of heads.

  It was there, ‘on the easel’, that the ‘Dead Child’ eventually appeared. For a whole week Fagerolles, his notebook overflowing, had been engaged in all kinds of complicated bargaining to ensure votes in favour of Claude. But it was uphill work; it clashed with other promises he had made and he met with nothing but refusals whenever he mentioned his friend’s name. He complained, too, of getting no assistance from Bongrand, who did not keep a notebook and who was so tactless that he ruined even the best of causes by his ill-timed outbursts of frankness. Fagerolles would already have dropped Claude a score of times if he had not firmly made up his mind to test his strength in obtaining an acceptance which was generally considered impossible. He wanted to prove that, if need be, he could force the Committee’s hand. Perhaps, too, deep down in his conscience, he had heard a call for justice and was aware of a certain lurking respect for the man whose talent he was plundering.

  On that particular day Mazel was not in the best of tempers. To begin with, the foreman had come running up with the announcement that:

  ‘Something went wrong yesterday, Monsieur Mazel. An hors concours was turned down. Number 2530; you know the one, sir, a naked lady under a tree.’

  He was right; the picture in question had been unanimously consigned to the scrap-heap without anybody noticing it was by an old classical painter, highly esteemed by the Institut. The idea of such a summary execution and the look of horror and amazement on the foreman’s face produced some irritating sniggers among the younger members of the Committee, who looked upon the matter as a priceless joke. Mazel, on the other hand, strongly resented such incidents, considering them detrimental to the authority of the École des Beaux-Arts. With an angry gesture he replied sharply:

  ‘Fish it out again and put it with the accepted ones,’ adding ‘There was an unbearable row going on yesterday, anyhow. How anyone can judge like this, at the gallop, I really don’t know, if I can’t even guarantee silence!’

  And he rang the bell furiously.

  ‘We are ready to start, gentlemen!’ he called. ‘Your kind attention, if you please!’

  Unfortunately, no sooner had the first group of pictures been set up than something else went wrong. One of the pictures struck him as being particularly bad and so harsh in its colouring that it set his teeth on edge. As his sight was failing he bent down to look at the signature, muttering as he did so:

  ‘Who the devil produced this monstrosity?’

  He was so shattered to read the signature of one of his own friends, another bastion of the holy doctrines, that he straightened up at once and, hoping that no one had heard his previous remark, exclaimed:

  ‘Beautiful! … A number one for this, gentlemen. Do you agree?’

  So the picture was granted a ‘number one’, giving it the right to be hung on the line. Mazel was pained, however, and his temper did not improve when he saw his colleagues laughing and nudging each other as they voted.

  They were all in the same position, really; many of them said exactly what they thought at their first glimpse of a picture and then had to eat their words when they deciphered the signature; so that after a time they learnt to be tactful and craned forward to cast a wary eye on the signature before expressing an opinion. Now, whenever a friend’s canvas or some doubtful effort by a member of the Committee was under review, they took the precaution of making signs behind the back of the artist in question, meaning ‘Be careful! Mind your step! It’s his!’

  In spite of the tense atmosphere, Fagerolles won a first victory over an abominable portrait by one of his very wealthy pupils whose family had entertained him on several occasions. It had meant taking Mazel on one side and trying to soften his heart by a touching story about a wretched father of three little girls starving to death; but the chairman was not easily moved. If you’re starving to death, you give up painting, he argued. You don’t drag three young girls down with you like this. Nevertheless, he and Fagerolles were the only ones who raised their hands in favour of the portrait. There were protests, and feelings ran high; even two Members of the Institut were up in arms about it, until Fagerolles whispered to them that he had done it for Mazel’s sake.

  ‘He begged me to vote for it,’ he said. ‘It’s by a relative, I believe. Anyhow, he wants it accepted.’

  Immediately the two Academicians put up their hands and were followed by a large majority.

  Jeers, laughter, cries of indignation greeted the next picture placed on the easel. It was the ‘Dead Child’. What would they send in next, the Morgue? The younger members made jokes about the size of the head; it looked like a monkey that had choked on a pumpkin, they said. The older members simply recoiled in horror.

  Fagerolles felt at once there was no hope. He started by trying to be smart and to jolly them into voting for it.

  ‘Come along now, gentlemen. An old stalwart, you know. …’

  He was interrupted by a burst of angry exclamations. No! Not that fellow! They knew him of old. He was a crank; he’d been pestering them for the last fifteen years, fancied himself a genius, talked about making a clean sweep of the Salon, but had never been able to submit an acceptable picture! There was all the hatred of unbridled originality, of the potentially successful rival, of invincible strength triumphant even in defeat, behind their shouts and exclamations, all meaning ‘Out with him! We don’t want him!’

  Then Fagerolles made the mistake of becoming cross himself, giving way to anger at the realization of how little real influence he had.

  ‘You’re not being fair!’ cried Fagerolles. ‘You might at least try to be fair!’

  That brought the matter to a climax. He was surrounded, jostled, threatened, a target for a volley of pointed remarks.

  ‘You’re a disgrace to the Committee!’

  ‘You’re only defending that to get your name in the papers!’

  ‘You’re not competent to judge!’

  Fagerolles was so angry that his powers of repartee deserted him. The only reply he could muster was: ‘I’m just as competent as you!’

  ‘Not you!’ came the quick retort from one little painter with a scathing tongue and a head of yellow hair. ‘So don’t think you can palm your duds off on us!’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ was heard on all sides. So was the word ‘dud’, repeated with great conviction, though it was usually applied only to the lowest dregs of their rejects and the flat, insipid daubs produced by the most obvious amateurs.

  ‘Very well,’ said Fagerolles, clenching his teeth, ‘I call for a vote.’

  Ever since the argument had taken a more violent turn Mazel had been ringing his little bell for all he was worth, and his face had flushed with anger at seeing his authority so flouted.

  ‘Come, come, gentlemen!’ he kept saying. ‘There should be no need for me to have to shout! Gentlemen, I ask you. …’

  At last he managed to obtain a moment’s silence. Fundamentally he was not an unkind man. Why shouldn’t he accept this little picture, he asked himself, even though he did think it was unspeakably bad? Plenty of others got accepted, so why not this one?

  ‘Gentlemen, a vote has been called for,’ he announced, and was just wondering whether to raise his hand when Bongrand, who so far had not said a word, though he was very red in the face through trying to contain himself, sudd
enly and unexpectedly gave way to his outraged conscience and cried:

  ‘Why, for God’s sake, there are scarcely four men in this room who are capable of turning out a piece like this!’

  The only response was a sort of general snarl; the blow had been struck home so smartly that no one could find a reply.

  Mazel, much paler now, repeated curtly: ‘Gentlemen, a vote has been called for.’

  But the tone of his voice was enough to indicate the latent hatred and the merciless rivalry that could lie behind jovial handshakes. It was rare for quarrels to reach such violence as this one. Generally they were quickly patched up, though beneath the surface outraged vanity was often left with wounds that never healed and creeping death was often hidden by a smile.

  Bongrand’s and Fagerolles’s were the only hands raised in favour, so the ‘Dead Child’ was rejected, and its only remaining chance of being accepted was the final revision.

  The final revision was a wearisome task. Although, after meeting daily for three weeks, the Committee granted themselves two days’ rest to enable the attendants to put the pictures in order, they always shuddered the afternoon they found themselves dropped in the midst of three thousand rejected pictures out of which they had to pick sufficient to bring up the total number of accepted works to the regulation two thousand five hundred. Three thousand pictures set out side by side all around the exhibition rooms and even in the outer gallery—everywhere, in fact, even on the floor, where they lay in stagnant pools separated by tiny pathways running between their frames. They were like a flood rising higher and higher till it filled the Palais de l’Industrie and finally submerged it beneath the dirty waters of all the madness and mediocrity that painting ever produced! And they had one single session, six desperate hours, from one to seven, in which to tear through this baffling maze of canvas. For a time they managed to keep fatigue at bay and their vision clear, but the forced march soon took the strength out of their legs and the flicker of colours irritated their eyes. Still they had to go on, walking, looking, judging till they were ready to drop. From four o’clock onwards they were a disorderly rabble, a conquered army in retreat, with some of the stragglers left breathless far away in the rear, while individuals here and there found themselves marooned on the little pathways between the frames on the ground and wandered helplessly about without any possible hope of ever finding their way out.

  In such circumstances how could they expect to be fair? What could they possibly salvage from such a heap of horrors? All they could do was to pick out at random a portrait or a landscape—did it matter which?—until they had made up the requisite number. Two hundred. Two hundred and forty. Still eight short. Eight more wanted. Which? This one? No, that. Whichever you like. Seven, eight, and that’s the lot! They had finished at last, and now they could hobble away in safety, free men!

  Another scene had held them up for a time in one of the rooms, around the ‘Dead Child’ which was lying on the floor with all the other jetsam. This time they treated it as a joke. One of them pretended to stumble over the frame and put his foot through the canvas, others walked all round it pretending to see which was the right side up and then swore it looked better upside-down. Fagerolles, too, joined in the fun.

  ‘Don’t be shy, gentlemen, don’t be shy! What am I bid now? … Take a look at it, gentlemen, handle it, examine it, and you’ll see you’re getting your money’s worth. … Now, please, my kind gentlemen, think again! Do your good deed for the day and take it off my hands!’

  Everybody laughed at the joke, but there was a harsh note of cruelty in their laughter that made it plain their answer was ‘Never!’

  ‘Why don’t you take it yourself for your “charity”?’ somebody asked.

  It was a custom that each member of the Committee should have a ‘charity’, that is, the right to pick any canvas, however bad, which was then accepted without question. Usually this was done as a kind of gesture towards artists who were known to be poor, and the forty pictures thus picked out at the last moment were like the starving beggars who were allowed to slip in and pick up the crumbs of the banquet.

  ‘For my “charity”?’ Fagerolles repeated blankly in embarrassment. ‘But I’ve already got a “charity” … a flower-piece … by a lady I …’

  Hecklers broke in at once with ‘Really! Is she pretty?’ and facetious remarks, which were anything but gentlemanly, were made about the lady’s painting. Fagerolles did not know what to do, for the lady in question was one of Irma’s protégées, and he was already trembling at the thought of the scene there would be if he failed to keep his promise. Then he suddenly thought of a way out.

  ‘What about you, Bongrand?’ he said. ‘Can’t you take that funny little dead child for your “charity”?’

  Heartbroken and disgusted by the shameless trafficking, Bongrand flung both arms in the air and cried:

  ‘I, insult a genuine artist! What do you take me for? … No! Let him learn a bit more self-respect, for God’s sake, and never send another blasted thing to the Salon!’

  So, since the others were still sniggering, Fagerolles, determined to have the last word, put on his boldest front and shouted, as if the last thing he was afraid of was being compromised:

  ‘That settles it! I’ll take it!’

  He was greeted with cheers, sarcastic applause, mocking salutes, and handshakes of congratulation. Hail to the hero who had the courage of his convictions! Meanwhile an attendant picked up the canvas that had been the object of so many jeers, so much man-handling, so much mud-slinging, and carried it away. Thus was the picture by the painter of ‘Open Air’ accepted by the Salon Selection Committee.

  The following morning a couple of lines from Fagerolles broke the news to Claude that he had managed to get the ‘Dead Child’ accepted, though not without a certain difficulty. Claude’s delight on receiving the good tidings was not, however, entirely unalloyed. There was something about the curtness of the note, its tone of condescension, even of pity, that made the whole affair sound unbearably humiliating. For a moment he was so unhappy about his victory that he would willingly have withdrawn his picture and hidden it away. Then gradually his sensitiveness wore off and he felt his artist’s pride grow weaker and weaker with his growing yearning for the success which had been so long in coming. Now, after all, it was practically here, so what else mattered? And as the last vestige of his pride fell away he began to look forward to the opening of the Salon with all the feverish impatience of a novice, living in a dream-world where wave after wave of seething humanity hailed his picture as a masterpiece.

  With the passage of years it had become established in Paris that ‘varnishing day’, originally reserved for artists to put the last finishing touches to their pictures, was an important date in the social calendar. Now it was one of those acknowledged ‘events’ for which the whole town turned out in full force. For a whole week before-hand artists monopolized both the press and the public. They fascinated Paris and Paris focused all its interest on them, their pictures, their sayings and doings and everything else about them, in one of those sudden, violent, irrepressible crazes that sent swarms of trippers and soldiers and nursemaids elbowing their way through the place on ‘free’ days, and accounted for the startling figure of fifty thousand visitors on certain fine Sundays when the main army of sightseers was followed by an ignorant goggle-eyed rabble filing through what was, for it, just a glorified print-shop.

  At first Claude felt rather afraid of the famous ‘varnishing day’. He did not like the idea of the fashionable crowd he had heard so much about and thought he would wait for the more democratic opening-day proper. He even turned down Sandoz’s offer to go with him. Then, when the day came, his excitement reached such a pitch that he suddenly changed his mind and was ready to go by eight o’clock in the morning, almost before he had given himself time to gulp down a bit of bread and cheese. As he was leaving, Christine, who felt she had not the courage to go with him, called him back to give hi
m one more kiss and say to him anxiously:

  ‘Darling, whatever happens, don’t be downhearted.’

  Claude was quite out of breath when he reached the central hall of the exhibition, and his heart was pounding in his breast as he hurried up the grand staircase. Outside the sky was cloudless; here the May sunshine was filtered through the awning stretched beneath the glass roof into smooth, white daylight, while through the doorways that opened on to the garden balcony came refreshing wafts of cool, damp air, for the atmosphere indoors was already beginning to feel heavy, and the faint odour of varnish was still discernible through the discreet musk worn by the ladies.

  As he stood still for a moment to get his breath Claude cast an eye round the pictures on the walls. Straight in front of him was an immense massacre scene, streaming with red, flanked on the left by some colossal but insipid saint or other, and on the right a commonplace illustration of some official ceremony commissioned by the State; then, round the rest of the walls, portraits, landscapes, interiors, all looking violently acid in the gilt of their brand-new frames. But his persistent fear of the notoriously select public for this great social occasion drew his attention back to the crowd, now growing visibly every minute. The circular seat with the greenery in the middle that stood in the centre of the room was entirely occupied by three female monsters, all abominably dressed, already settled in for a good day’s scandal-mongering. Behind him a husky voice grinding out a sequence of harsh noises turned out to be an Englishman in a check jacket explaining the massacre scene to a jaundiced-looking wife swathed in an enormous dust-coat. The room was not yet too crowded to allow small groups to form, break up and then re-form again a little farther away. Everybody was looking up; the men carrying walking-sticks and overcoats, the women moving gently along and turning half round when they stopped to look at the pictures. As a painter Claude was struck by the flowers on their hats which looked particularly garish against the surrounding waves of shiny black toppers. He noticed three priests and, most unexpectedly, a couple of private soldiers among the endless files of gentlemen wearing decoration ribbons and the processions of mothers and daughters which kept holding up the traffic. Many of the visitors knew each other, so there were many exchanges of smiles and nods and hasty handshakes as they met and passed on. Tones were hushed, however, and the voices were drowned by the ceaseless tramp of feet.